ICO becomes the Information Commission on 30 September: what changes for consumers?

The present regulator operates as a “corporation sole”. Its statutory powers and responsibilities are vested in one office, the Information Commissioner. The Data (Use and Access) Act 2025 replaces that model with the Information Commission, a body corporate governed through executive and non-executive membership.

From 30 September, the Commission will have collective responsibility for decision-making. Government explanatory material says the Commission must have between three and fourteen members and that, as far as practicable, non-executive members should outnumber executive members.

Seven non-executive members were appointed to the new Board in July 2026. The ICO said the appointments would broaden the skills and experience available at the top of the organisation and strengthen strategic leadership and oversight.

The Government says the board model is intended to improve accountability, organisational resilience and the quality of decision-making. It argues that regulation now has to respond to rapid technological change, increasingly complex data-driven services and growing expectations about transparency.

That is the institutional case for the reform. A board can bring a wider range of experience and reduce the extent to which responsibility appears to rest with one individual. Whether consumers experience a stronger regulator will depend on how that structure affects real decisions, investigations, enforcement and the explanations given to people who complain.

The ICO has said that the Information Commission will maintain its existing regulatory functions and responsibilities. The Government has likewise said that all regulatory and other functions will transfer to the new body.

The change is designed to transfer the regulator's functions rather than interrupt them. Nothing in the official announcement says that an existing complaint must be withdrawn or resubmitted because the Commission has taken over.

Consumers making a new complaint should continue to use the official ICO website and current published process. The regulator has not announced that people need to use a different website or locate a separate organisation.

A broader board could strengthen scrutiny, challenge and institutional accountability. It could also make the regulator less dependent on the approach of a single office-holder. Those are credible potential benefits, but they are not the same as evidence that individual complainants will automatically receive a fuller investigation or a different outcome.

For consumers, the meaningful test will be whether the Information Commission explains its decisions clearly, identifies the evidence it considered, acts consistently and uses its regulatory powers where intervention is justified. A new structure matters, but its value will be shown through practice.